Let Him Go (He'll Come Back)
by Jadelyn Tate
Summary: They're about to graduate high school and Allison is worried about Stiles and Lydia. COMPLETE


**Author:** Jaded  
**Story:** Let Him Go (He'll Come Back)  
**Disclaimer:** Teen Wolf is owned by Jeff Davis and MTV. I write for fun, not for profit.  
**Summary:** They're about to graduate high school and Allison is worried about Stiles and Lydia.  
**Warning:** Eventual Sterek.  
**A/N 1:** This came from reading this on tumblr. Don't ask. Also, lame title is lame.

Allison had been through a lot the last couple years. From her aunts death, her mother's suicide, breaking up, for good, with Scott when he chose his mother and Stiles over everyone else, including her, it was a miracle she wasn't completely insane. The one thing she still had, the one thing that had never really changed, was Lydia. Smart, competent, surprisingly dependable Lydia had never let any of the changes in their lives effect their friendship. She was Allison's anchor, the thing that allowed, even if it was only recently, to finally bury the hatchet with Derek. She'd never be a part of the Hale Pack, which her father was eternally grateful, but they weren't enemies anymore. Allies, even friends with some of them. But not pack.

And now they were graduating. Scott, Stiles, her, Lydia, Jackson, Erica, Danny. Boyd had dropped out and Isaac was repeating a year, but the seven of them were finished with high school in a week. The pack were (mostly) staying in Beacon Hills and California; Erica, she'd heard through Lydia, was doing correspondence classes and Scott was attending college in the next town over so he could remain living at home. Jackson and Danny were going to be roommates at San Francisco State. Allison herself had gotten into Yale, so she'd be going to New Haven come August. Lydia and Stiles, unsurprisingly, were going the farthest away from the Pack; Lydia to CalSci in Los Angeles (there was a math professor she idolized there, apparently) and Stiles to UCLA. It was the latter information that had Allison pausing.

"Stiles is going to be in LA with you?" she asked, turning to look at her friend. Lydia nodded. "When did he decide this, cause I didn't think he'd chosen yet."

"I don't know, but I know he announced it at dinner the other night, when we all said where we'd chosen," she shrugged.

"And did you go before or after him?"

Lydia gave her a look. "After, why?" she asked, in a tone of voice that just insisted Allison make her point or drop it.

Ooh boy. She'd been wondering for a while if she should ever try and bring this up and apparently she was going to. She just hoped Lydia didn't kill her afterward.

She took a deep breath. "You need to stop stringing Stiles along," she told Lydia bluntly, because sometimes, for how smart she was, the not!werewolf could be incredibly stupid.

"I am not," Lydia said sharply, hand tightening on her glass of water, "stringing Stiles along."

"Lydia, I know you don't mean to but...you kinda are and you have been since I got here," Allison told her gently.

"Stiles knows perfectly well I'm not interested in him like that," Lydia said but she didn't sound nearly as confident as she had been before.

"Does he?" Allison asked. "Lydia, he never dates, and I know he's been asked."

Especially since this past year, when Stiles had agreed, reluctantly, to let the two girls give him a bit of a makeover. As Lydia had pointed out, it was senior year. With a few wardrobe changes (not a lot, true, cause he was still Stiles) and getting him to grow his hair out a little bit, he'd become more desirable to the girls in school. Nevertheless, he'd turned down every girl (and a guys) who'd asked him out and gone stag to every party and dance.

"That doesn't mean I'm-"

"He's in love with you, has been since he was eight years old," Allison broke in. "And you know he has but you haven't discouraged him. You haven't told him, flat out, that it won't happen. You keep him hoping so he...doesn't deal with his feelings. And now he's going to LA, where you'll be going, even though he got into Stanford, Yale, and Columbia."

"UCLA has one of the most advanced and best architecture programs in the country!" Lydia argued.

"But Architecture is his fall-back major, you know that," Allison reminded her. "He likes designing and building homes, yeah, but his passion is literature. And Yale and Columbia's programs are better. So tell me, why is he going to UCLA?"

Lydia didn't reply, not that Allison expected her to. They both knew the answer. Stiles, even if he didn't know it consciously, had chosen UCLA to be closer to Lydia. Part of him probably thought if he and Lydia were the only two in LA, something might happen. It wasn't rational, no, but neither was being in love with someone for ten years who only just recently gave you the time of day. Stiles, for all his thinking and smarts, had a habit of letting his heart do all the decision making for him.

"He's my load-bearing beam."

Allison looked at her quizzically. Lydia wrapped her arms around herself and walked over to the window, staring out at the quarter moon.

"Lydia?"

"He's...he's always been there Alli," Lydia said and Allison knew how much this was costing her to say aloud so she didn't make a sound. "When my entire life seemed to be crumbling around me, he was just...always there. My parents were divorcing and putting me in the middle so I couldn't depend on them. But I could Stiles. Cause I knew no matter what I did, he'd...he'd forgive me. Because he loved me. And then Peter happened and...he's always been there, Allison. What if...what if I tell him its not going to happen and...he leaves? I think I'd die, Alli, I really think I would."

And Allison understood. Stiles was to Lydia what Lydia herself was to Allison. The only difference was the lack of trust there. Lydia didn't trust Stiles to remain around once the possibility of more was gone, so she let him think they might have a "one day."

"I get it," Allison swallowed. Lydia gave her a disbelieving look and Allison smiled wryly. "Trust me, I do. You're my Stiles, Lydia, I'd have gone crazy a long time ago with out you."

Lydia's expression softened a bit. So many people who didn't know better thought Lydia was a cold-hearted bitch but this...this was proof she wasn't. "I never knew that."

"And Stiles doesn't know either," she said. "But you have to ask yourself. If you were in Stiles shoes, if you were in love with me and I never said anything to discourage you, and you made all your choices with that in mind..."

She didn't finish because Lydia was crying now, silent tears slipping down her cheeks. Allison tugged her down onto the bed and wrapped her in a hug. She could feel the tears soaking into her neck, where Lydia had buried her face.

"I'd be upset," the strawberry blonde whispered. "But...I'd still be there."

"So why can't you trust Stiles will remain there for you? He's loyal to a fault, Lydia you know this," she reminded her, rubbing soothing circles on her back. "Once you have it...nothing will ever break it, not even murder and mayhem."

"Or turning wolfy," Lydia murmured and she knew the other girl was thinking about Scott. About Derek and Isaac and Erica and Boyd. About Jackson and Danny and Allison and all the shit they'd inadvertently put him through because he'd refused to back down, refused to betray them. Scott and Derek didn't trust easily, they'd both been through too much to do that, but Stiles...he trusted completely, even when he shouldn't. Respect, on the other hand, respect was a lot harder for him to give away.

Which was why it took until senior year before he and Derek became friends. Go figure.

That, however, was neither here nor there and Allison had a weepy strawberry blonde to comfort.

"Lydia, you need to tell him before he makes what might be a huge mistake," Allison urged gently. "If not for him, then for yourself. Because even Stiles has to have a limit."

She let that sink in a moment before laying it all out there for her.

"You need to decide what's worse—letting him down now, yourself and probably being able to salvage a friendship with him for life, or waiting for him to reach that limit and cutting you out completely for his own sanity?"

Though she knew it had happened, Allison never heard the story of how the conversation between Stiles and Lydia had gone down but the result was Stiles going to Columbia instead of UCLA. The most she'd ever heard was the Friday before Spring Break of their freshman year, when neither could afford to go back home or do anything else, he'd invited her down to New York as a thank you. He'd never said what he was thanking her for and she'd never asked. Instead they'd done the tourist thing for the week and generally became the kind of friends she suspected they would have been if not for Scott.

And the summer between sophomore and junior year, when Lydia had burst into her room giggling that Stiles apparently smelled like Derek and Derek like Stiles, Allison knew everything would be okay.


End file.
